The new POP exhibit at the Taubman Museum of Art, titled “Pop Power from Warhol to Koons: Masterworks from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation,” opened September 28 in the downtown museum.
The exhibition, organized by the Taubman Museum of Art and curated by Deputy Director of Exhibitions and Education Dr. Patrick Shaw Cable, will go on to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art when it closes here March 8, 2020.
“There were certainly international examples of pop art, but it never took off elsewhere the way it did in the U.S., so I really focused on American artists among the pop orbit,” says Cable.
There are 114 works of art on display from the Jordan D. Schnitzer collection, with an additional four works from the Taubman’s permanent collection. There are 14 artists in the exhibit showcasing pop and neo-pop.
“He likes to share the collections a lot around the country. They develop a lot of exhibitions from that collection, but it now has over 14,000 prints and multiples by over 250 different artists,” says Cable. “It was really wonderful to be able to select from that for the show.”
Cable says Schnitzer Foundation sponsored the exhibit making it possible for children to visit for free.
“We didn’t have to pay a loan fee at all. We just had to worry about shipping costs, and that’s really thanks to the generosity of the Schnitzer Foundation to make their collection available that way,” says Cable.
The exhibit features works from pop icon Andy Warhol to neo-pop artists such as Claes Oldenburg and Julian Opie.
“Not only is Schnitzer’s general collection the nation’s largest collection of prints and multiples, he also has one of the very most comprehensive collections of work by Warhol,” says Cable.
Cable said Schnitzer wanted to tell new stories with his collection, which has already been used extensively to showcase works by Warhol.
Inspired by the pop genre and the works in the Schnitzer collection by Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Indiana, Cable chose to keep the pop genre central to the exhibition’s theme but extend it to include neo-pop and contemporary artists as well.
“I realized, thinking about Warhol in the 60s, his work still feels very contemporary, even though it’s 50 years old now, which is interesting,” says Cable. “I’ve found that even for younger audiences, I think, in their 20s, he still feels very fresh to them. Usually, things get eclipsed very quickly by a younger generation’s new interests.”
The exhibit also features work from artists Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, whose works sell for some of the highest prices at auction for living artists, which Cable said represents the staying power of the pop movement.
“Pop artists were, in part, reacting to the dominance of abstract expressionism, but you could also say that it helped give them exposure,” Cable explains. “But they were, fundamentally, reacting and responding and embracing popular imagery in the growth of capitalist consumer culture that developed after World War 2.”
Cable says these artists saw these images as, for better or worse, part of life during that period of time, “so why not use them to tell stories.”
“There’s a whole range of approaches to popular images, but they decided to use them as a language in their art. It was more a use of popular imagery as a dictionary, and there are a lot of different ways the artists approached that dictionary of popular images,” says Cable.
About the Writer:
Jennifer F. Riales is a Roanoke-based freelance writer and blogger. She and her husband, both originating from Memphis, TN, enjoy visiting local coffeehouses, going on walks with their dog and cuddling with their two cats.
